I set up the petition for London's independence. Here's how it would work | Hacker News Reader

I set up the petition for London's independence. Here's how it would work

littleatoms.com

72 pointssirteno94 comments

This is some twisted logic if I ever saw it.

"Leave campaign have no plan". Yes, they do, their plan is to re-assert border controls and negotiate the best deal with the EU possible from that starting point. You may not like such a plan, but it is one.

The fact that the contents of such a deal are unknown is entirely due to the fact that the EU refused to discuss or even contemplate any alternative to the status quo. If anyone was idiotic enough to actually try this idea, they'd simply hit the same problem: the EU would not talk to them, and they'd be left campaigning with no plan.

So if your criticism is based on "out voters don't know what they were voting for" then well done, you'd put yourself in exactly the same boat.

Moreover, the same sort of anti-EU feeling that drove Brexit is not isolated to the UK. It's rising all over Europe. What makes this guy think the EU will actually even exist five years from now, let alone be something actually desirable to be a part of?

In 2017 there are four votes that could potentially damage the EU, this is coming on the heels of a vote in Austria where the "Austria first" presidential candidate lost by just a few thousand votes.

https://medium.com/@octskyward/ok-what-now-e3f64d38f7

"The Leave campaign has no plan" comes from the aftermath of the vote. There has been a serious lack of leadership from the Leave captain, and a lot of backtracking on promises.

I was expecting Boris or Farage setup a great press conference telling us what they were going to do starting by requiring Cameron resignation, appointing guy X and Y, start a task force to do Z. A message for the market. Even banter like saying they would ask all the European in the UK to register somewhere, tightening the border controls, suspend the naturalisation or permanent residency demand coming from European people, ...

It does not matter about the content, as you said, I would probably not have liked it or found it reasonable. But at least it looks like the guys were a bit prepared to win, that they had put some thought in at least maintaining the appearance that they would push for the stuff they promised or for something.

Eh? Because there isn't enough shock? Gently, gently. The idea is to avoid entirely alienating the losers.

> "The Leave campaign has no plan" comes from the aftermath of the vote.

Specifically, this report on Sky News: https://youtu.be/2Gybrn6XLh0

Negotiations are delicate things. You can't just go on TV and show all your cards. The UK has months of wrangling with Brussels now. There's nothing to say because this is how negotiations work. Anything said now could change and you'd be crying "dishonesty" later.

Jesus man, give it time. I think you have unrealistic expectations here.

"We'll come up with something positive" is not a plan.

But Boris and Farage have no power to implement anything at all. It is the responsibility of Parliament and the elected government to organise the exit. The leave campaign have no democratic mandate whatsoever.

This is ridiculous. I personally think Brexit was a bad idea, but what do down-voters expect to accomplish by down-voting a legitimate comment from a person presenting a different perspective?

Do you really expect you're going to learn their reasons and motivations by talking with like-minded people in a bubble?

"Sky News Journalist, Says Pro-Brexit MP Told Him ‘Leave Campaign Don’t Have A Plan’": http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/faisal-islam-brexit-no...

>"Leave campaign have no plan".

The reality here is the EU doesn't discuss alternatives to staying in the EU, so there's nothing to say until negotiations are well underway. That's fine, the UK has a powerful economy and will just negotiate like every other nation outside the EU does. Is the USA and China hurting for not being EU members? The larger economies have more sway, if anything not being in the EU means a better deal for the UK.

I'm starting to see this the way I saw Communism in the late 80s. The cracks are showing. I don't think these trans-national unions will ever truly work. People want autonomy, have their own identity, have their own politics, and don't want to be bullied by Moscow/Brussels.

Its clear the leftist Europeans made the EU into way much more than it needed to be. All the social issues are now center to it instead of it being a economic participation and common currency to help facilitate business. I hope its not too late to reform before it goes away. Losing 60m people and a $2.6t GDP is a serious loss to the EU. The idea that the UK, who historically has a strong economy and military, will suffer but the EU won't is laughable.

Heck, the EU is still signing checks to millions of Greek pensioners who worked maybe 25 years at do-nothing government jobs and retired at 50 and who will live to be 75-80, being on a pension longer than they've worked! As a Greek-American, I see this stuff first-hand when i visit my motherland. Of course the English are sick of paying for the corrupt EU nations who know how to game the system. How could you not be? Toss in unfettered immigration and its a miracle the EU is even in one piece right now.

I think history will see this a shrewd move, the same way we see Thatcher keeping the pound instead of the Euro as shrewd. The EU might make sense as a French-German-Italian dominated economic forum with smaller member nations getting sweetheart deals from them, but as-is its too expansionist, too ambitious, too tolerant of corruption, and too distracted by non-economic issues. I could certainly see it turning into a G7-like format that removes all the social/immigration stuff and focuses just on economic development.

edit: I prefer replies to drive-by downvotes. HN is very liberal and as such any remotely conservative or moderate view isn't welcome but you guys can at least try to argue your point here.

The president that got elected is the candidate of the green party, which happens to be very pro-europe.

The reason those (edit: austrian) parties got the turnout they got is a consequence of years of misgovernment and corruption scandals, real and perceived, and using the european parliament and the commission as kind of "retirement"-option for politicians that need to get out of the light.

The UK already had a very favorable deal with the EU, it is not imaginable that they get a better deal than norway or switzerland, which will amount to "pay the same, have no say".

What "leave"-voters somehow didn't get: free trade, free movement of labor, unrestricted mobilitiy only go one way. So you either have british retirees living in spain for cheap, and spanish workers in britain. Or you don't.

Merkel and Hollande want Britain to bleed to scare other countries from following suit. But you forget that Britain has immense economic leverage over the continent that Switzerland and Norway do not. Britain is a huge market for French and German goods (more so than the other way around). Many of these, like German cars, are easily substituted with goods from other countries. The gloves are coming off. The British government would be doing a disservice to their people if a threat to sink the German car market in the UK is not on the table. We all know that Merkel does not like to play dangerously. I suspect Britain wins this game of chicken.

This could play out very well for all of Europe if the EU disintegrates into what it really should have been, a European trade agreement and not much more. But that will have to come from the people of the continent, not their leaders, who are totally sold on the concept of a European superstate. "The nation-state remains the true foundation for happiness and harmony."

Interesting way to look at it.

A different way is that Britain (through the mealy mouths of the Boris and Nigel show) is massively conflicted; the ever-popular (Wo)man on the Street is confused and angry from a decade of being bled by "conservatives", and, as often happens, responded to their pain by symbolically punching down. It is obvious that the vote had nothing to do with opinions on the EU to a huge number of voters. This is unfortunate, but often happens, especially when there are opportunists looking to ride anger to power.

The problem is that that anger is dangerous and unpredictable. I think the little weasels never expected to actually win, and now they've had their bluff called. Just watch little Boris try to jib and dance around all their lies on his recent appearances - it would be great comedy if this weren't all so dangerous.

My bet is that England (I'm not talking about Britain) doesn't leave; Scotland, however, does eventually get a divorce, and I don't yet know what I think about Ireland.

And the Boris and Nigel show ends like a lot of these little fits - they both learn to not care about their reputations and make out just fine after demonstrating their incompetence at running a proper insurrection.

>It is obvious that the vote had nothing to do with opinions on the EU to a huge number of voters.

Just because they don't approach it from some high-minded constitutional-philosophy or European-project perspective doesn't mean that it wasn't about the EU. The biggest issue was immigration, because the EU doesn't allow the British to control immigration into their own country. If you wanted lower immigration, the EU gave you one option: leave the EU. When the continent totally rejected David Cameron's reasonable (and I think insufficient) list of reforms, they confirmed that.

For the Tories who voted Leave, it was also about economic growth because the EU has forced all member countries into a high-regulation (and in my opinion, low-growth) model that's more about protecting inefficient French businesses from competition than about raising the fortunes of the British people. It didn't matter how many elections Conservatives won, because socialism was imposed at the EU level. The EU even ganged up on Ireland for daring to have a low corporate tax rate. No change in the composition of the British delegation to the powerless European Parliament, where they were severely outnumbered anyway, had any chance of ever changing any of this. Again, the only way to even get the chance to vote for free market policies was to leave the EU. Now the British people can decide for themselves what path they will take, a choice which is by no means predetermined.

Many Scottish people feel the same way about their membership in the UK. I think that autonomy within the UK is the answer for them, but they really should leave if they think it's the only way they can control their own destiny. They definitely deserve a second Scottish independence referendum once the Brexit instability calms down.

> "It is obvious that the vote had nothing to do with opinions on the EU to a huge number of voters."

I'd recommend thinking twice when it comes to blanket statements like that. The only thing I'd be willing to make a blanket statement on is that the mainstream news media has been very manipulative when it comes to pushing their own agendas, and this applies both to the Remain camp and the Leave camp. With that in mind, I couldn't honestly put my finger on what mattered most to the 30,000,000+ voters, though I'd suspect the reasons for Remain and Leave were a lot more diverse than the mainstream media wanted to suggest.

You are welcome to think as many times as you like. I'll be sticking with the impression built so far until I see evidence that contradicts it. And that points strongly to a lot of folks wanting send an "FU I'm angry" signal.

I will note two things: I'm not talking about 30m+ voters; I'm talking about a significant block of them. 'Huge' != all; which you even quoted. A little hard to tell, but you seem to be arguing with a rather stronger claim than I made.

Second, I have zero interest in anyone's "mainstream media" bashing. Fine, whatever, they suck. But unless you're willing to point to specifics and make specific allegations, I consider MSM bashing to be content-free; the political pontificaticator's equivalent of bitching about the referee in sports. (To be clear, of course media actors have agendas. Always have, always will. Depending on what lens you choose, they're people, they're loosely-coupled political operations or they're corporations, and the notion that you'll find impartiality there is either a utopian pipe dream or a cynical, selectively-employed critique made to delegitimize reporting the critic doesn't like.)

>Moreover, the same sort of anti-EU feeling that drove Brexit is not isolated to the UK. It's rising all over Europe.

reminds about federal vs. state power struggle 155 years ago on another continent - the solution of the issue back then seems to have so far been keeping the separation issue off the table. Another case - after almost 70 years of strong federal power, the moment that federal power weakened, the components of USSR run immediately away.

I mean my point here is like comparing a cable bound agglomeration of smaller ships vs. tightly welded one huge ship of the same mass - the former is nice and enjoyable with some impression of freedom of movement on a quiet summer day until wind and waves start to pickup, and cables are immediately broken while the huge ship wouldn't even notice it with the cruise's patrons continuing to have non-stop party :) Of course the cruise ship have deep hierarchy - the patrons are stratified into different classes, ship's staff subject to tight discipline, a captain having God-like powers and a gun in the safe...

Yes, they do, their plan is to re-assert border controls and negotiate the best deal with the EU possible from that starting point.

They can't reassert border controls while negotiating to be part of the common market, and they need the EU far more than the EU needs them. The leave campaign plans were fantasies sold to the electorate, and some frankly very distorted (like 350m for the NHS every week), and they have rowed back on almost all their promises. So yes I think it's fair to say they don't know what they're doing and certainly to say that they have no viable plan. Here is Boris Johnson traducing everything he stood for on the campaign trail in an attempt to court Brussels and the rest of the electorate (attempting for example to claim that the campaign wasn't about immigration after all):

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/06/26/i-cannot-stress-t...

and being soundly rebuffed the day after:

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jun/27/brussels-rej...

If they reassert border controls UK trade would suffer massively, they simply can't take that risk, and if you read what the chief architects of the leave campaign are now saying, it's clear they know this and are going to have to compromise massively on their promises, including not imposing border controls at all, because that wasn't a very practical idea, and it would lock them out of the EEA.

What makes this guy think the EU will actually even exist five years from now, let alone be something actually desirable to be a part of?

Many people now feel the same about the UK, the markets are certainly behaving as if the UK is damaged goods. Ask citizens in Scotland, Gibraltar, London or Northern Ireland and you'll find they're being taken out of the EU without their consent - all these regions voted to remain, only England and Wales wanted to leave. There is a serious possibility of the UK not existing within 2 years as Scotland wants a referendum. Perhaps Brexit will mean the downfall of the EU, which you apparently consider with relish, but I doubt it, and sincerely hope not, as that would mean almost inevitable war on the continent. I suspect the EU will survive, as long as they can stop petty national concerns (like German domestic politics) from interfering in their treatment of important issues like Greece.

While this London petition was obviously born of frustration and isn't particularly helpful, it does raise an interesting issue - many inhabitants of cities nowadays don't feel any particular allegiance to a given nation state or regime, nor do they want to, the reason they voted remain is simply to keep parochial identity politics out of their lives, and be part of something bigger. I think the really interesting issue here is how nation states and national identities are starting to be blur (they are after all relatively recent invention), and what will replace them as globalisation spreads.

Prior to the current wild swings in the currency markets, the price of the UK pound was always pushed up by the intensity of the economic activity in the City of London.

This screwed the rest of the country over by preventing a proper devaluation of the currency; making industrial exports overly expensive, and generally destroying the competitiveness of UK industry.

(Of course, the generally shit state of UK management didn't help much either).

The mispriced pound killed jobs and generally contributed to the economic malaise and sense of exclusion which helped to produce the resentment which produced this referendum result.

As the situation stands, the plummeting pound is going to help this a bit, but only to the extent to which the electorate have shot the financial sector in the head, and forced it to be exported to the Eurozone.

As I see it, a (very very limited) form of Londipendence may be our best bet at preventing the flight of jobs and financial services revenue whilst decoupling the pound from the deleterious effects of an economy overly skewed towards London and overly skewed towards financial services.

We'd get a more well-rounded economy, and we'd keep the financial services jobs and expertise in London.

Far from radical, I think its' the closest thing that we've currently got to a win-win situation.

Why would you want to keep the financial services jobs? The finance sector ruins whatever country it's located in and corrupts the local politics.

The best result for England of a generally deplorable Brexit would be the complete exile of the City to the continent.

Well, if you could send it into semi-exile but keep the tax receipts? Seems like something that's worth exploring, anyhow ...

FYI the "City of London" is distinct from "London" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrObZ_HZZUc

I know. In this context I'm using it as a lazy and confusing sort of hand-wavy way of referring either to the square mile or Canary Wharf -- and hijacking the debate a bit to promote my own wild and wacky schemes whilst I'm at it -- but hey, it wouldn't be the internet without some sort of conceptual slippage going on, would it?

It's an interesting idea to entertain, if outlandish. See http://bigthink.com/strange-maps/the-city-states-of-europe (HN discussion at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11192948):

> "The 21st century will not be dominated by America or China, Brazil or India, but by the city," writes Parag Khanna (1). The author of several books on global strategy, Khanna argues that (some) cities, as islands of good governance in an increasingly unstable world, will become the cornerstone of a new world order.

> That new world order won't be a "global village" of nation states, for globalisation is corroding national sovereignty. Rather, it will be a loose network of semi-independent city states, perhaps resembling the Hanseatic League and other medieval trading alliances.

This is almost the exact premise of The Napoleon of Notting Hill by G. K. Chesterton [1]

It's set in 1984 (predating Orwell's use of the same date) and considers the breakup of London into city-states each based on a particular borough. It's a very short book, but well worth the read.

[1]: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/20058

If there's one thing I've learned from this debacle, it's that in 2016, people firmly believe being an asshole is the best way to conduct politics.

Well, it seems to be working

> We all knew that a Brexit vote would unleash forces we didn’t understand – a series of rolling crises in high finance, macro-economics, politics and diplomacy

I find things like this shocking. That most of these articles are just shooting from the hip.

When Cameron first floated the idea of the Brexit. He did so, consulting all the civil servants in the country. You know, the ones who actually run the country and know exactly what needs to done should a leave vote happen.

There is no scrambling around, there is no forces we don't understand, there is no crises in high finance, politics or diplomacy.

This is a country that had it's own empire and had 200 civil servants to run India.

I constantly laugh at postings here that Germany is going to take Finance and the Tech center from London and that the UK Economy is going to collapse.

The UK did just fine outside of the europe before the EU turned into the EU. It will do FINE just outside of the EU.

What a lot of people need to remember. Is what Germany is going to do now. How will it AFFORD the monies that the UK was paying. The German people are the ones who are going to foot that bill.

Also, Hollande is on shaky ground. Le Penn may win and therefore will most certainly want her own Frexit vote.

Merkle, is on shaky ground, she's up for re-election next year? What if she loses?

Yeah, interesting times ahead. But in some respects. The UK may actually be doing better.

Watch this space.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jun/27/global...

Hollande is on way worse than shaky ground. It's hard to see how he could ever get reelected now, he may not even bother running.

I've written a blog post on the upcoming votes in 2017 that could, if they go the "wrong" way, completely wreck the EU or at least radically change the negotiating outlook:

https://medium.com/@octskyward/ok-what-now-e3f64d38f7

I am finding it very entertaining how people who see themselves as cosmopolitan, worldly and intellectual so drastically fail to pay attention to what's going on elsewhere.

The EU is a disaster zone. It's run by an alcoholic who has turned up to summit wasted and then literally slapped world leaders in the face. Faced with the worst blow the EU has ever faced he gave a press conference in which he answered only two questions, to the second of which he simply said "no" and then walked out. The president of the EU Parliament said he thought the UK was "holding the continent to ransom because of an internal fight in the Tory party" AFTER the vote took place.

The people arguing that they need to secede from the UK in order to rejoin the EU, don't seem to have noticed that the EU is rapidly becoming a basket case that is seeing radically anti-EU politicians topping the polls in major, important economies ... whilst its leaders submerge themselves in denial.

The situation in France is way worse that what can be seen in the media, 3 months of major strikes with even petrol shortage in half of the country, the president has only 13% support, the lowest of the 5th republic. They even had gunshots on the main building of the party.

The socialist party (equivalent of UK's labour) is dead as dead and I expect it to break into pieces as people are going to create new left parties. On the left side, the far left is almost guarantee to win. On the right side, the party is weak and polluted by internal fights and if they choose the wrong candidate, they are also dead.

The country is the most anti-EU country in Europe, even more than the UK, only Greece is toping France on that aspect. Although it's not for the same reasons as the UK.

The next election, only in April is going to be pretty intense.

Indeed.

It should confuse any reasonable person that despite the death-knell 'Leave' has meant to be to trade and immigration, it's supported by many powerful free-trade libertarian think-tanks. For example: the Hoover Institution [0], the Cato Institute [1], the Adam Smith Institute [2], etc.

For whatever reason nobody likes to admit that there are intelligent people with different beliefs to them.

[0] http://www.hoover.org/research/cautious-yes-brexit

[1] http://www.cato.org/publications/economic-development-bullet...

[2] http://www.adamsmith.org/evolution-not-revolution

The UK had the most Europ-skpetic vote in the EU Parliment - its something that Boris and his cornies never mention, they constantly got overruled since they were always against anything that allowed the EU project to move forward.

The UK will go on fine just like The republic of Congo is doing fine.

The EU for a long time has provided great boost in wealth for about 40 years. Its only due to the financial crisis that things have not been really great lately.

However the European Project is much larger than any single nation state or generation of people. Given the change that has been happening over the last 50 years, do you think trade, movement of labor is going to decrease in the next 100 years ?

America is an economical powerhouse with 3/5 of Europe's population. Same goes for China. Even India has more clout when it it dealing with american companies since the consumer base has more value.

Europe has two paths, one is disintegration and one is faster and more united integration.

The important thing from the Perspective of British interest is that both path leads to Britain being a loser.

If the European Project fails then Britain is going to suffer as much as any other European country ( one of the reason why britain's foreign policy for 400+ years has been promoting continued stability in Europe )

And if Europe goes down a path of deeper integration the UK will be a competitor to a trading bloc that is essentially is a giant Star ( 15 Trillion vs 2 Trillion )

The EU also has plans for integration with Turkey, a country with the largest land army in Europe. As much as british people think of Turkey as a joke - its one of the fastest growing economy in the world.

Who do you think will have more leverage when forging trade deals with the middle east ? Turkey and Friends or the UK ?

The thing that most british people do not seem to realize is how small 55 million is - in a flat world of 7 billion people. It used to be different, but not anymore.

The EU also has plans for integration with Turkey

It has had those plans since 1993. They haven't gone anywhere (there's effectively been a stalemate since 2002), and I don't expect meaningful progress for another generation.

I constantly laugh at postings here that Germany is going to take Finance and the Tech center from London

I know people working in finance in the city who believe this, large banks like Morgan Stanley believe it and are moving staff, what makes you think it won't happen?

http://uk.businessinsider.com/morgan-stanley-eu-referendum-a...

Or in other words the UK is exceptional, and will avoid the forces that wreck the economies of other nations in similar situations.

Of course at many times in the last 100 years our economy was not "just fine". The post war era was a string of constant economic trouble, despite having many thousands of eager civil servants. And the 1930s saw horrible unemployment and desperation.

You have to admit that brexit is an act of enormous bravado. People have forgotten just how bad things can get. Right now we are spending the dividend afforded to us by decades of peace. I hope it is worth the price. You may be right in everything you say, but I just wanted the prosperity to last just a little longer.

Welcome to democracy, serves you right. I'd have much preferred remain to win too. It's hurting my northern wallet too.

One vote goes against him and he's throwing toys out of his pram. Perhaps he should consider that the people who mainly triggered the exit have had a powerful rejection of their worldview, by London and Westminster, since the 1980s.

If the smug liberals had funded appropriate redevelopment for regions losing ship building, steel, coal or what have you, this mess could have been easily avoided.

I'm surprised it took 40 years of ignoring the issue for the mice to roar.

I would replace your use of "democracy" with "unfettered capitalism". Allowing the rich and powerful to continuously claim a larger share of the economic pie pits the rest against each other for scraps.

I'm not sure the problem is those "smug liberals," but rather the conservative factions in Britain and abroad who would rather perpetuate a humanity at war with itself for their own profits rather than accept a slightly lower standard of living in return for a stable and satisfied populace which sees the greedy mismanagement of the global elite and concludes the only people they can trust are dangerous demagogues who would sooner smash a system to the ground than attempt to fix what the poor and angry perceive as poverty and hopelessness by design.

If London was as smugly left wing as he the author thinks it is then it would not have voted Boris Johnson as mayor for two terms. The same Boris Johnson that was the head of the Leave campaign.

London is libertarian, or old school liberal, not left-wing, and Boris Johnson did just fine as an old school liberal mayor before he started agitating for Brexit.

At least amongst some libertarians I know in the US, Brexit is definitely favorable to them. Is it a different brand of libertarianism?

Too many people conflate what "globalism" (of the E.U. variety) has become with the libertarian program of open borders and free trade. The E.U. is a long march towards political unification. That's why you have libertarians who (rightly) oppose it.

It's a branch of libertarianism that believes that if laws and regulations must exist, they should be implemented at the highest possible level in order to ensure consistency and insulation from provincial arbitrariness.

The sort of 'libertarianism' that would advocate a world wide state than? To me that looks more like the ultimate in repression than in anything you might call liberty.

Exactly that sort of libertarianism. According to such a view, a world wide state would be less oppressive than a nation state because the center wouldn't have the sort of local knowledge to make repression truly effective, it wouldn't have the petty and internecine struggles that make local politics nasty, and it would have to fight through all the intermediate layers of administration in order to implement repressive policies. Because of this reason, small political units such as North Korea and Eritrea can be more oppressive than large ones such as Russia or China could ever hope to be, and most oppression in the United States takes place at the local rather than national level (e.g. excessive incarceration, civil forfeiture).

TL;DR: neighborhood bullies are far worse than the average dictator.

So from their perspective, the amount of repression one gets in a Soviet Russia or China is acceptable, and scaling it up to be worldwide could be considered libertarian? Or do they believe there is some way of stopping the worst people rising to the top in a worldwide government that doesn't exist at the Russia/China scale?

From their perspective, a cosmopolitan USSR or China would be more libertarian than a national USSR or China, if only because their leaders, no matter how authoritarian they might be, would have a harder time utilizing the local-level knowledge that makes repression effective. They would have to deal with a wider variety of interests whose support they would need to stay in power, which further dilutes their power. In addition, citizens would have more options to play different levels of government against each other; if the state-level government is becoming too oppressive, one can always appear to the supranational government, as Europeans do to the ECHR or ICJ, or as southerners did to the Eisenhower administration in the 1950s.

In short, no dictator can oppress me like my family and neighbors can, which is why any dictatorship with a drop of wisdom would try to co-opt them.

I fail to see how a worldwide China has any less local knowledge than a China sized one - it is not even a factor of 10 difference in population. Also, a cursory look at history would suggest that dictators have a lot more power to oppress you than your family and neighbours. I assume you are misrepresenting the ideology due to lack of space - are there any books/tracts/thinkers you can point me at with more detailed descriptions of it? Thanks.

I think Scotland leaving would make it more likely.

Scotland has a population of only 5 million people - and London will soon have double of that.

Also London's economy would boast in a massive way since 97% of its income goes to Westminster unlike New York, the mayor of London needs to actively lobby for things London needs. ( this is outside the boost provided by things like staying in the EU ).

Its also more practical - its far easier to secure London's borders then it is to secure all of UK's ( nothing stopping people from Spain riding up Cornwell in a boat )

Westminister could relocate to Sunderland since it would be the new heartland.

Will it matter to Scotland's goal of joining the EU after getting independence from the UK that they would have the worst deficit in the OECD [0] and have, in the past, only been a net contributor to the UK economy in three of the last fifteen years [1]?

It seems to me that the EU might require Scotland to make huge cuts to public spending. Would Scotland's independence be worth more to them than say free university tuition? I guess the SNP would avoid making cuts to certain nationally loved items, but something would surely have to give; either they would get higher taxes, or public spending would have to fall.

Of course, the EU might agree to let them remain and also allow them their deficit, but there looks to be an increasing strain on the EU's richest members, so who knows whether that would be allowed.

[0] http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2016/03/if-scotland-had-gone-in...

[1] http://chokkablog.blogspot.co.uk/2015/03/simple-summary.html

It would be very difficult to justify letting the Scots maintain a deficit worse than Greece but without the same German-led austerity.

> Will it matter to Scotland's goal of joining the EU after getting independence from the UK that they would have the worst deficit in the developing world

You probably intended to say "developed" instead of "developing", but the link actually says worst in the OECD, which is not equivalent to the developed world (though most OECD members are in the developed world, lots of the developed world is not in the OECD.)

You are correct - I was trying to avoid the acronym and ended up completely bodging the meaning; I modified my comment in response.

I find the whole argument of Scotland rejoining the EU bizarre... work for years to gain independence, just to give it away again.

As for the linked article, I'd like to know what the author meant by 'worldview'. I have a feeling people are getting the EU confused with Europe, as if leaving the EU meant we were no longer European. The media in the UK have clearly done a great job at brainwashing people, the amount of nonsense I've heard in the last few days has been staggering.

They wanted independence from Westminster, not from the EU.

Why? What do the gain from independence from Westminster that they wouldn't have to give up by rejoining the EU?

Which (to my American eyes) strikes me as odd. Isn't the average Scot given more democratic say by being a part of the U.K. than the E.U.? As I understand it, the E.U. is not a particularly democratic institution to begin with, and without the Westminster to back them up I would think Scotland would be more vulnerable to E.U. politics. Perhaps I am mistaken?

EU is as democratic as it gets but I think it failed to market itself as such. There is an elected parliament so what's undemocratic?

I feel like a broken record at this point, but... The European Parliament has less power than every other parliament that I know of in one crucial way... They cannot propose new laws. Without the power to propose new laws, they cannot set the agenda for the EU. Only the European Commission can propose new laws, and Commissioners are not voted for by the general public. That's the key reason that the EU is not as democratic as the UK's political system, elected representatives do not have the full power to represent your interests, they can only shape what other people propose.

Commissioners are not voted for by the general public directly. Each country appoints one. Why is the general public not annoyed at the undemocratic Prime Minister ? He's not voted for directly either. Same for each member of the cabinet.

How many times... the Prime Minister IS democratically elected! If you're interested in how it happens, follow the upcoming Conservative leader elections.

As for the countries appointing a Commissioner, it doesn't matter as Commissioners have a clear mandate to avoid taking instructions from their own government. In other words, they don't represent the people that appoint them either. If you don't believe me, watch this video from the European Commission's own YouTube channel, see if you can spot the bit about not taking instructions from their own countries...

http://youtu.be/nWpgO1EPO_Y

> How many times... the Prime Minister IS democratically elected. If you're interested in how it happens, follow the upcoming Conservative leader elections.

The upcoming Conservative leader elections will elect the new prime minister, and will not be a direct democratic election of the British populace, so that would seem to support the upthread claim that the PM is not directly, democratically elected.

I don't know if you're from the UK or not, but I'll assume for the moment that you're not... In the UK system, you vote for members of parliament (MP for short) that represent your local area. The majority of MPs have party affiliations, so in principal you vote based on both the local candidate and the party that you want to rule the country (in practice many people know diddly squat about their local MP and vote purely on party affiliation). So long as a party reaches past a set number of MPs in order to reach a parliamentary majority, the leader of that party becomes the prime minister.

In principal, as people are voting for the best combination of MP candidate and party that suits them, there's no need for a new election to decide the new prime minister as the Conservatives still hold the parliamentary majority. In practice, as most people know very little about their MPs and are voting based on the personality and perceived competency of the party leader (and/or identification with the principals of the party), there will be people calling for a new general election.

I didn't vote for the Conservatives, and I'd like to see Labour take their place, but now is not the right time to do so. Not only have we got the uncertainty surrounding Brexit, there's also a civil war going on in the Labour party, which is likely to get worse when the report from the Chilcot Inquiry on the Iraq war is released next week. We need stability right now, new UK elections can wait until 2020.

Also, the leader of each party is voted for by the members of that party, and anyone can become a member of a party by paying a small membership fee. If you care about who is the leader of a particular party, you do have the choice to have a say in it.

they cannot set the agenda for the EU. Only the European Commission can propose new laws

That's unfortunately placed. The European Commission does not set the agenda for the EU either (that's done by the European Council, which is directly elected).

In principal the European Council sets the agenda for the EU, but the European Council cannot propose new legislation. It's the legislation that sets the direction of the EU.

It is difficult to measure how 'democratic' a particular government is. Some have compared the E.U. favorably to the U.K. government while still acknowledging that it falls short in certain regards [0].

But democracy is about more than just voting. It really comes down to "how much say does the average person have in the rules that govern their lives?". Will the Scottish vote count for as much being a part of the E.U. (where they are only 1% of the population) as it will staying a part of the U.K. (where they are 8% of the population)? Will the Scottish parliament retain as much independence from the E.U. parliament as they do from the U.K. parliament? Will the Scottish government be in a position to protect the interests of its people against political machinations, or will they be too often asked to sacrifice on behalf of "the greater good"?

I don't presume to have answers to those questions, so Scotland joining the E.U. may be the smart move. It just doesn't seem obviously so to me.

[0] http://theconversation.com/how-democratic-is-the-european-un...

(where they are 8% of the population)?

They may be 8% of the population, but they have 0.15% of the government's power. Scottish law is written mainly in Westminster, in which the conservatives have an absolute majority. 56 of the 59 Scottish seats went to the SNP, only one to the conservatives.

56 seats out of 650 = 8.6%.

Population of Scotland as a percentage of total UK population: 5.3 million people / 64.1 million people = 8.3%.

Seems like the Scottish have about the same level of say as the rest of the UK population when it comes to the House of Commons. Plus, they have their own parliament in Holyrood.

I said power, not representation. But you're right, I should have said 0.3% (1/331), not 1/650.

Sorry, where are you getting that 0.3% figure from?

1 seat out of the 331 conservative seats that are currently running the UK.

MPs in opposition still have power, though admittedly less power than those in a majority government.

Also, if Scotland was in the EU government the number of seats would be set roughly proportional to the size of the population vs. the population of all EU countries (though it apparently doesn't follow a set formula, so all the numbers that follow are just to help with guesswork).

Population of the EU, minus UK but adding in Scotland... 447 million people (approx.)

5.3 million people / 447 million people = 1.2% (approx.)

As far as I can see from Wikipedia, Slovakia has roughly the same size of population as Scotland, and if I've read the table correctly it has 13 MEPs.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apportionment_in_the_Europea...

13 / 750 MEP seats (would be 751 with the President of the European Parliament) = 1.7%, not too far off 1.2%.

So would you expect Scotland to have much of a say in the EU if it had so few seats?

I think democracy and underrepresentation are different things and it seems most don't see the difference. Would London be more democratic as a separate state? They voted to stay in the EU but it seems their vote doesn't count much as the UK leaves the EU. Does it make the UK undemocratic? Of course not. I think the idea behind EU is that united you can accomplish more(at least on long term). It's democratic but like any democratic system it has multiple players. UK left it because it couldn't control it not because it was not democratic. That's not necessary a bad thing for the rest of EU

The Comission.

This sounds quite democratic to me. Am I wrong? "A new team of 28 Commissioners (one from each EU Member State) is appointed every five years. The candidate for President of the Commission is proposed to the European Parliament by the European Council that decides by qualified majority and taking into account the elections to the European Parliament."

Commissioners don't represent the people that elected them, they take an oath to put the interests of the EU itself ahead of the wishes of member countries.

Well, the gov cabinet members are not elected either. People elect only key people(i.e. the PM/president etc) that have the power to delegate others to work on their behalf(i.e a chain of command that starts with the vote).

I don't see how the interest of the EU would not be the interest of the member countries.

All cabinet members have a dual role, as they are also their constituent's MP. Furthermore, if they do a bad job in either role, they can be voted out at the next election. The same type of democratic accountability does not exist for EU Commissioners, as the general public can't vote for someone to replace them.

> "I don't see how the interest of the EU would not be the interest of the member countries."

Perhaps it's worth considering other groups they can be serving, namely themselves and big business. In terms of serving themselves, changes that expand the influence of the EU over member states can be of interest to the Commission even if they didn't serve the individual member states, as the goal could be to create a European super state (there are signs that this is what's planned for the EU, especially the Eurozone countries). As for serving big business, there are over 30,000 lobbyists in Brussels, that number wouldn't be so high if they weren't having some success. I could point out examples of the European Commission pushing forward proposals from big business if you're interested?

Fortunately was not given to us by external forces(i.e. God) so if it's not democratic enough I'm sure it could be amended. Unfortunately UK didn't have such demands... The undemocratic argument seemed to be just a pretext.

Can you say that in a different way, I'm not sure what you're talking about.

> Which (to my American eyes) strikes me as odd. Isn't the average Scot given more democratic say by being a part of the U.K. than the E.U.?

Independent of how much "democratic say" Scotland has in the EU vs the UK (which I'm not even sure how you would quantify and compare), the EU is a more limited government than the UK, and requires unanimity for certain important actions. Even with the devolved Scottish government, Westminster has more extensive power to set law in Scotland against the will of the people of Scotland than the EU would if Scotland were a member.

> "the EU is a more limited government than the UK"

That's how things stand now, but they won't for long. If an independent Scotland chose to join the EU they'd have to make some tough decisions about how much of their power to give away. For example, will they join the Eurozone? Even if they choose not to now, increasing consolidation of the Eurozone may make it pretty much inevitable in the near future, especially after 2025 when the EU Treasury is due to be set up, as the EU Treasury will almost certainly focus on the economic development of Eurozone countries.

The EU is about a united/cohesive and strong Europe. Ukraine is a european country outside kf EU and look what kind of issues they have and how the other european countries responded.

I'll leave 'strong' aside for the moment. Looking at united/cohesive, how united/cohesive do you want to see EU member countries become? Would you like to see a United States of Europe? If not, where do you draw the line, what decisions should national governments retain control over?

With border controls in place people don't feel very united and the border control was the main reason why the UK had to leave EU. I think the more integrated EU becomes the better for all so you end-up with USE but this should take time(i.e 100 years). To sum it up UK is not interested in the EU values or political integration. It wants just a trade agreement so I fail to see how EU could meet its demands.

> "border control was the main reason why the UK had to leave EU"

No, it wasn't. Again, at the risk of repeating myself, the reasons for leaving the EU were far more diverse than the mainstream media led people to believe. If you think that the main reason for leaving was border control then you've been lied to, it's as simple as that.

I hope you are right...will see how it goes on the negotiations table. Freedom of movement is still required to access the EU market.

I have never seen so many loud sore losers after an election in my life. The globalist establishment has shown nothing but total contempt for people who don't share their world view. I hate to be the bearer of bad news[1], but you're not changing anyone's mind. Everytime I see the WaPo or the Guardian push the false narrative of Leavers all being ignorant racists that have brought doom to Britain, the more happy I am that they won, the more optimistic I am about their future. Every time you try to usurp the will of the people, they become stronger against you. The people will have their way and the British people have a track record of success.

[1] Who am I kidding, I love it.

> I have never seen so many loud sore losers after an election in my life.

In some parts of the world, sore losers after an election start civil wars.

It has been a pleasure and a privilege watching these arrogant, morally bankrupt fatcats get their just desserts.

> I’m a smug, bourgeois liberal who lives in North London – so the result felt like a powerful rejection of my entire worldview.

This sentence said just about everything I needed to know about the author. Being smug isn't a badge of honor, and describing oneself as 'smug' is as much of a red flag as a date that shows up late and describes themselves as 'A jealous person' or 'high maintenance'. They believe that they are so special and unique that annoying behavior is actually endearing. Heaven forbid something happens that shakes his worldview.

Edit: Apparently it's ironic humor. This isn't the first or last time I've underestimated just how subtle British humor can be.

You're missing some context. Much of the Leave campaign has been appealing to workers by labelling more wealthy socialists as "smug superior intellectual upper-middle class Guardian readers" etc [1]. The author is just parodying that, he's not actually proud of being smug.

[1] http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article44970.htm

I think you may be missing an important part of how this guy communicates. Like many Brits, he's using someone else's label of himself in a semi-ironic way. He almost certainly acknowledges there's some truth to it, but doesn't wholly agree with it.

If you read the piece with John Oliver's voice in your head you'll get the true intent behind the words. Tongue-in-cheek I think is the term that used to be used though it has fallen on hard times of late (possibly due to Globalist Elite agenda, hear hear!)

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